I'm a very by-the-numbers, factual person, so I want to include some details about my wedding and final thoughts in hopes it helps others.
Location: Los Angeles, CA - The 1909
Guest Count: 55
Budget: $20,000
Actuals: ~$26,000ish
General Cost Breakdown:
Venue: $5,700 - We had the venue for 12 hours, which included space to get ready, hold the ceremony, have a cocktail hour and dinner on the lawn, and go inside to a ballroom for dancing. For all of these amenities in LA (plus parking!), we felt like this was a good deal. Note: We had our wedding on a Sunday and kept our guest count low, but still during "peak season;" if we had our wedding on a Saturday or had more guests, costs would have been higher.
Catering: $5,000 - The venue has an adjacent restaurant that catered our food, although we were welcome to bring in an outside vendor. But the restaurant's food was amazing so we went with them. And we are so glad we did! Our guests said they had never been so well-fed at a wedding. Costs included 3 passed appetizers, buffet-style dinner (chicken, beef, ravioli), 2 salads, 2 sides, refreshments (agua frescas, lemonade, iced tea), and coffee/tea with dessert.
Bar: $1,200 - We spent $650 on a bartender and $550 on alcohol. We got to bring our own alcohol, which I think saved us money in the long-run. We went to Bevmo and Costco and got 2 different wines, champagne, and 4 different beers. Our signature cocktail was a Pimm's Cup (my husband is English), and everyone loved that. We budgeted for an average of 4 drinks per guest over a 5-hour period.
Desserts: $250 - So my husband and I don't really like cake... But my husband LOVES donuts. So we had a great time going around town trying different donut shops. We ended up getting a ton of some pretty, artisanal donuts for $200 (matcha, horchata, rose, etc.). We spent $50 on a cake from Susie Cakes just so we could have a cake-cutting.
Rentals: $2,300 - Our venue had rentals, which was a huge added benefit because we didn't have to source them. They had different tiers of rentals too. We had tables, chairs, an arch for the ceremony, cocktail tables, sofas for cocktail hour, gift tables, plates, silverware, linens, etc. It was great to use the venue as a one-stop-shop for everything.
DJ: $900 - We were debating not getting a DJ at one point but I am so glad we did. Our DJ was fantastic and went above and beyond to make our day flow smoothly. If you're considering not getting a DJ, one thing to remember is it's really helpful to have an emcee to make announcements throughout the night. I couldn't have imagined not having someone direct guests when it's time for dinner, when to go inside to dance, etc.
Jazz Trio: $500 - My husband wanted a jazz trio to play while we had cocktails and dinner. It was such a nice touch and really created a nice ambience for the night.
Photographer: $1,600 - I'm going to be real with any Los Angeles brides -- photographers can be crazy expensive. I'm sure it's like that in any big city, but WOW. We went with Classic Photographers and selected our photographer and she was fantastic. I was skeptical at first because this price was so cheap compared to other photographers, but she really did an amazing job. This covered 6 hours of shooting with 2 photographers, plus a 1-hour engagement session. And we received our edited photos in a few weeks.
Officiant: $350 - This was a weird one. I'm not from LA, so this is a whole different world for me. My husband and I aren't really religious, so we were looking for someone who could do a quick, easy non-denominational ceremony. In LA, there are certainly a lot of "celebrity" officiants who really like to boast that they've done the wedding of [insert D-list celebrity here]. Wacko... Anyway, we found a nice, down-to-earth pastor who Skyped with us and made the ceremony perfect.
Florist: $1,200 - My florist was also amazing. She reuses flowers throughout the event. So after we had our ceremony and went to take photos while guests were at the cocktail hour, she deconstructed our ceremony arch and spread the flowers all around the venue -- so smart! This covered our ceremony arch, bouquets for me/bridesmaids/moms, boutonnieres for groom/groomsmen/dads/officiant, ceremony decorations, decorating our cake, a million little bouquets everywhere, a manzanita tree for decor... just amazing!
Costco Flowers: $300 - We got some table runners and baby's breath from Costco. We used the baby's breath in mason jars to put on miscellaneous tables. The Costco runners were great and a huge cost-saver. A 4-pack of 6' runners was $100, so $25 per table vs. $100 per table through my florist.
Photobooth: $750 - Our venue pulled through again. They had a photobooth on-site made from a beautifully restored 1970's VW bus. Our guests loved it!
Favors: $180 - We bought these succulent candles off of Amazon and put them in little wooden holders. And then we put a metal placecard card stand in the wooden holder with a placecard for everyone's assigned seat. I thought everyone would leave them behind but they actually used them to display their photobooth photos, like a picture frame. I'd like to say that was entirely intentional on our part, but it wasn't. Regardless, I'm happy people liked them!
Misc. Decorations: $100 - I totally forgot about just little decorations around the ballroom, so I shopped the sale section on BHLDN. Found some paper fans and hanging signs and they looked pretty cute! Also got little signs and things from Hobby Lobby.
Invitations/Save The Dates/Thank Yous: $700 - We went through Minted. We had foil-embossed invitations and kraft paper envelopes. The whole process was easy and the invitations were beautiful.
Wedding Dress/Veil: $3,000 - This was over-budget -- my bad. The dress was $1500 and the veil was also $1500... Did I think the veil was too much? Yes. Was I mad about it for months? YES. The boutique was great about my dress budget and I spent about as much as I planned to spend on that. Then they put this veil on me... It was gorgeous and my mom said I HAD to have the veil. Well I just about died when it cost as much as the dress. (It was handmade in Italy or something, maybe from unicorn hair?) Anyway... It looked great, so I'm less mad, but it's definitely becoming a family heirloom that everyone will have to use at their wedding forever. 
Dress Alterations: $1,000 - Could I spend any more on this dress...? One great thing to know about lace dresses: They are more expensive to alter. When I had my initial consultation, it seemed pretty simple: adjust the bodice to fit my stupidly-short torso (which is the story of my life), hem it a bit higher so the dress doesn't drag, add a bustle, loosen the lace sleeves a tiny bit so I have room to dance. It didn't seem drastic. Well, if you have lace and mesh/tulle everywhere, it is hard to manipulate and make alterations because the tailor is trying to retain as much of the lace pattern as they can without it overlapping. Anyway, it was quite a lot and something I wish I knew beforehand about lace dresses.
Hair: $700 - I had a stylist come out to the venue to do hair for myself, my MOH, my bridesmaid, my mom and my MIL. She was fantastic and was such a huge time-saver through the day-of chaos (more on that below). I didn't want to have our makeup done because my mom and I are really into makeup and we didn't want to look weird if a MUA did it. I hate the over-the-top glam, highlighter-crazy look and was so worried that's what we'd get being in LA. Everyone looked great and looked like themselves, which is exactly what I wanted.
Dance Lessons: $250 - This was actually my husband's idea. I was kind of whatever about it, but it was so worth it to not look like eighth graders at a middle school dance.
About: So as I mentioned, I'm not from Los Angeles. I'm actually from a very rural, not-well-known part of California. But my husband and I live in LA and are in "the industry" so we decided to have the wedding here. I know LA is expensive but WOW, the sticker-shock I initially had was nuts, especially growing up in a not-so-nice area where everything is pretty cheap (for California, anyway). But we looked around at Palm Springs, Orange County, San Diego, even my little home town, and we weighed all of the pros and cons. We were going to have a lot of out-of-town guests regardless, so LA made the most sense airport-wise. I also wanted to be close to the venue and vendors for meetings and site visits. We visited a bunch of venues, but I fell in love with The 1909 because it's actually up in the Topanga Canyon mountains and the geography reminded me a lot of home. We didn't want a rustic wedding, but it kind of turned out that way. But I think we modernized things with our decor and other little details.
Take-Aways/Learnings:
- Lace dresses are hard to alter. See above.
- You don't need to spend a ton on invitations. They'll either get lost in the mail or people will lose them, and then you'll be sad.
- If you live in LA, anticipate people will get stuck in traffic. Our officiant got STUCK stuck in traffic (there was an accident and no one was moving) and got to our venue minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start. I had a freak-out, yes.
- If you have a freak-out, it's really nice to have someone in the wedding party who's cool-as-a-cucumber all of the time (shout-out to the best man).
- If you wear a long veil and are walking on a wooden deck, your veil might get snagged and pop-off while you're walking down the aisle. Get an aisle runner of some sort. If that happens to you, remember that there are cameras so just keep smiling.
- You can plan everything to the minute when setting-up and you'll still be short on time. We had 5 hours to set-up with 10+ people helping and we barely made it in time, and we had so few decorations. But there's so many little things, like carrying stuff from the parking lot to the venue, that ends up taking way more time than you anticipate.
- We didn't do a first-look and we are SO glad we didn't. It was a time-thing. If we planned to do a first-look I have no idea how that would have worked because we were rushed for time when setting-up.
- Buy lunch for people who help you set-up! They really appreciate it (and deserve it)!
- Bring stuff for the photographers to take photos of while you're getting ready. I forgot to bring an extra invitation or a ring box or whatever. It's not necessary, but they kept bugging me while I was trying to do my makeup and I didn't realize that was a thing people did.
- It's possible to do a wedding for <$20k in LA/SoCal (I see this topic come up a lot), but you really need to do a lot of research. We opted for a nicer venue, nicer food and fun little details like a photobooth and jazz band, but definitely cut back the guest list. ...and my dress cost way too much (but it was worth it). We received money from both of our parents in addition to paying for it ourselves. But finding a venue that allows you to bring in your own caterer, alcohol, etc. can offset costs.
- There's definitely a happy medium between focussing on the details and obsessing over details people won't remember. We actually got a lot of positive comments for a few weeks after the wedding, which really made us feel like we did it right. People loved our venue and the food, and they really enjoyed the Pimm's cups. They loved the photobooth. The loved the donuts. They also liked the favors, which I thought they'd ignore and leave behind! One of the biggest comments we got was how much people enjoyed our short-and-sweet 20-minute ceremony. They thought it was beautiful, but a good amount of time. I'm actually not a details person, but my husband is. I think without a lot of his little details, it wouldn't have been as magical as it was. But on the other hand, no one said anything about the paper fans and other decor, or really commented on our invitations. I think the details revolving around the overall experience are what people remember and appreciate, and I say that also thinking about other weddings I've been to and what I remember.
- If you get married in California, be aware of fire season. We knew we were taking a risk of having our wedding in October, and luckily all of the fires broke out a week or two after our wedding. Fall weddings in California can be beautiful, but you are taking a risk.
Let me know if you have any specific questions about anything! Good luck, soon-to-be brides!
